Tired of tossing empty toilet paper tubes in the trash? Weary of rewinding balls of yarn that tumble from basement shelves? Frazzled by a flurry of fabric scraps?

Hold on. Help is on the way.

Starting this fall, all of those still good, but unwanted items - such as buttons and bolts of ribbon - can be donated to a reuse resource center in downtown Perrysburg.

A partnership of the Perrysburg Office of Litter Prevention and Recycling and the Perrysburg Area Arts Council, the center should be up and running next month, said Judy Hagen, program coordinator for the litter prevention and recycling office.

Items donated to the center, in the basement of the former Shale's Pharmacy, 102 Louisiana Ave., will be sold for a nominal fee to nonprofit groups, such as scout troops, and to teachers in private and public schools.

The center is seeking reusable items not just from area residents. Ms. Hagen hopes Perrysburg business owners will take a look at their solid waste products. Perfectly usable materials, such as overstocked items, discontinued items, and overruns and rejects, could be turned into treasures instead of trash.

By donating materials, businesses save on waste-disposal costs, improve the quality of education, demonstrate social responsibility and concern for the environment, promote the ethics of conservation and environmental stewardship, reduce landfill demands, and create a public relations opportunity for employers and consumers, according to Ms. Hagen.

Letters explaining the program will be mailed to businesses.

The center, which will be staffed by volunteers from 9 a.m. to noon on Saturdays, is getting some local interest. A beauty shop, for instance, is saving its empty toilet paper rolls, Ms. Hagen said.

Extra ribbon from florist shops would be a welcome donation, and fast-food restaurants could donate items including small paper cups.

Different colored milk jug lids could be used by math teachers; foam blocks could be turned into letters for word groupings for reading classes, and paper-towel tubing could be used by science classes to build roller coasters, Ms. Hagen pointed out.

“This is a trash-to-treasure kind of thing, reusing an item one more time before it gets recycled,” she said. “It will be a dib of this, a dib of that.”

An advisory board has been set up to help oversee the center's operations. Board members “will tell us the things they want to see” on the shelves, Ms. Hagen said.

The center, which does not yet have a formal name, is patterned after reuse resource centers in Ann Arbor, Mich., Columbus, and Cincinnati.

There are about 55 similar centers across the country, said Julie Rhodes executive director of the Reuse Development Organization, also known as ReDO, based in Indianapolis.

“They are becoming increasingly popular,” Ms. Rhodes said. ReDO has helped start up a dozen in the last year.

The centers have evolved to meet several needs, she said. “We're seeing dwindling budgets of schools for supplies,” she said, noting that studies show that teachers often spend $200 to $500 a year out of their own pockets for classroom supplies.

Outdated calendars, fabric scraps, and plastic punch-out pieces leftover from manufacturing processes take on new life, thanks to the centers.

Business contribute the materials and then teachers select items for use in the classroom to benefit students. “It's a win-win-win situation,” she said. “Everyone wins.”

ReDo is a national nonprofit organization that evolved after a 1995 reuse conference. After the conference, reuse organization operators decided there was a need to create a national reuse network and infrastructure.

Some centers sponsor workshops to show teachers how to use scrap materials, Ms. Rhodes said.

Local and state grants help fund some of the centers, she said.

The Perrysburg center is being funded in part through a grant that the local arts council received this year from the Ohio Arts Council, said Gail Hamilton, president of the Perrysburg Area Arts Council.

One of the arts council's goal, Mrs. Hamilton said, is to network with other agencies in the community to encourage interest in visual and performing arts.

“Basically, what we are trying to do is offer art supplies at a reasonable cost and recycle things people don't want any more but can be used for art projects,” Mrs. Hamilton said.

Right now, several bins of puzzle pieces are awaiting the center's first customers. There are also some wonderful paper samples in a rainbow of colors, she said.

“People are savers,” she said. The center will be a place where people can donate their saved items “and they can feel good about recycling.”

First Published October 3, 2001, 5:35 p.m.